Any comments on my Red IPA Recipe for this weekends brewday

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ScruffyBrews

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Morning all,

I'm fairly new to putting together my own recipes but have had a bash at a Red IPA recipe I intend on brewing this weekend. Would really appreciate some comments, what are your thoughts?

Estimated OG: 1.061 SG
Estimated Color: 28.5 EBC
Estimated IBU: 45.1 IBUs


Fermentables
Pale Malt, Maris Otter 72.9 %
Crystal, Light (Simpsons) 8.8 %
Munich II (Weyermann) 7.2 %
Oats, Flaked 7.1 %
Crystal, Dark (Simpsons) 4.0 %


Hops (based on 10L batch - 12.5L post boil vol.)
16.8g Cascade - 60.0 min
5g Irish Moss - 15.0 mins
12.12 g Citra- 15.0 min
9.32 g Cascade - 15.0 min
10.00 g Citra - 0.0 min
8.00 g Cascade - 0.0 min
10.00 g Citra - dry hop for 7 days

Yeast - Safale American (US-05)
 
With 13% crystal in there, isn't it going to be rather too malt forward and sweet for the style? The hops might carry it to a certain extent, but it's not massively hopped. I think I'd swap a lot of that crystal out for dark Munich or even Simpson's Imperial, but keeping the wort colour as near to 30 ebc as possibe.
 
That is a lot of crystal, I'd ditch the light crystal personally and replace it with more base malt, more munich might be good.

That is 5x as much irish moss as you need.

It's not that hoppy in IPA terms, if you want a bitter IPA then you'll need to up the bittering but if you want it more modern with low IBUs then you don't really have enough late hops/dry hops.
 
Noted on the Crystal, think I will reduce down the light crystal and replace with more Munich as I have a lot in stock.

In terms of IBUs I have pitched it at the lower end of IBUs as per the style guide (think the range is between 40-70...) but take on board the comment on more late addition hops. I only have a total of 50g of Citra on hand, and the recipe uses all my Cascade. What would you suggest as a sensible amount of Citra at the 15 and 0 mins? 15g at 15mins and 30g at 0mins sound sensible...?

Thanks for your help its really appreciated
 
Noted on the Crystal, think I will reduce down the light crystal and replace with more Munich as I have a lot in stock.

In terms of IBUs I have pitched it at the lower end of IBUs as per the style guide (think the range is between 40-70...) but take on board the comment on more late addition hops. I only have a total of 50g of Citra on hand, and the recipe uses all my Cascade. What would you suggest as a sensible amount of Citra at the 15 and 0 mins? 15g at 15mins and 30g at 0mins sound sensible...?

Thanks for your help its really appreciated
Have you got any other hops in stock?
If not, I think you're pretty much making the best use of them.
 
You could use Columbus or chinook for bittering and use the cascade later in the boil. You could also use a bit of simcoe late or for dry hopping, but be careful, I find simcoe gives a dank flavour that I'm not too fond of. If in doubt, stick with the original plan.
 
You could use Columbus or chinook for bittering and use the cascade later in the boil. You could also use a bit of simcoe late or for dry hopping, but be careful, I find simcoe gives a dank flavour that I'm not too fond of. If in doubt, stick with the original plan.
Thanks for the input! Think Chinook for the bittering would be a great idea and try to maintain my IBU's on the lower end (I have another very bitter beer conditioning at the moment), then save the Casscade for the 0min addition. Thanks for the tip on the Simcoe, not used it before so might save that for another brew!
Thanks so much for your help
 
Hey there @ScruffyBrews , I do similar size 10-12L batches - I can give you a few suggestions based on my own experience (though others may disagree).

1. Lose the crystal malt. Get rid of it all. In my experience it somehow swamps the hop flavour. I made a number of disappointing beers before I figured this out. Then I made up for it with a very acceptable Simcoe & Chinook hopped beer that used base malt and Munich 2.
So you can keep the Munich 2 if you like, but personally I wouldn't bother with the oats.

2. Lose the crystal malt.

3. See #2 😉

4. I like Simcoe, I use it a lot. I think it's a really good bittering hop, but equally works well all through the boil to flameout and dry hop.

5. I like a bitter IPA so personally I wouldn't have much problem throwing in some Chinook and Columbus as well, but maybe that's not quite your thing....

6. For a 10L-ish batch don't use daft hop amounts like 9.32g. Just work in multiples of 5g amounts - it's much easier for measuring and stock keeping and you won't taste the difference.

7. As already noted, that's way too much Irish moss - for 10L-ish,1g or ¼tsp is plenty. And you can add it with 5 mins left in the boil, it'll be fine.

8. Did I mention lose the crystal malt?

9. I'd probably do something like:
5g each Citra, Cascade & Centennial 15mins
10g each Citra, Cascade & Centennial 10mins
15g each Citra, Cascade & Centennial 5mins
(If you prefer you could try shifting them all 5 mins later so there last one is at flameout if you want to do a whirlpool/hopsteep). From there work it backwards - add enough Simcoe/Chinook/Columbus at 60 (or even 30 or 20 mins) to got your target IBUs.
For 10-12L I'd be looking for 60g dry hop for a big hoppy beer, so what's left? I'd probably avoid Chinook in this case, but I'd roll the dice with any of the other hops you've mentioned. Or juggle the hops around to leave enough for your dry hop. I make a Black IPA with Simcoe & Citra dry hop which seems to work well. I certainly don't think you'll go too far wrong with a Citra dry hop.

10. Have fun and don't sweat it. You'll still make beer, probably pretty good, and if it's not quite there you can change it up next time.

Cheers,

Matt 👍🍻
 
Last edited:
Hey there @ScruffyBrews , I do similar size 10-12L batches - I can give you a few suggestions based on my own experience (though others may disagree).

Thank you so much for your input Matt! I unfortunately saw your post a little too late for the grain, I weighed it out the night before and before reading your comment. The final grain bill was as follows:

Maris Otter 67.5%
Munich II 19%
Flaked Oats 7.5%
Dark Crystal 3%
Light Crystal 3%

If I make this one again (or something similar) I will be sure to remove the Crystal!

I did take on board the comments on the aroma hop additions though, I kept the IBUs slightly lower though as I have a couple of high IBU beers in stock.

Red Ale Mash.jpg

Above: About 30 minutes into the mash, looking kind of red...

Brewday went well with no major hiccoughs, currently sitting at just below 20 degrees C and happily fermenting away. Looking forward to giving it a taste!

Simon
 
No problem dude. I'm sure you'll still make some nice beer 👍

As I recall, when I've used crystal malt in IPAs they lacked the hoppiness I was aiming for, but for the most part the beer still turned out good, just a little different to what I'd intended 🍻
 
Brew Update:

This beer went into the bottle this weekend for conditioning, had a little less than a full bottle left over so would have been rude not to give it a try! Tastes like its going to be a good beer, completely got your point on the lack of hoppiness though Matt, it has quite a sweet malty taste which I think slightly overpowers the hop aroma, not sure how some added carbonation is going to effect that? But after a few sips you start to get a build up of that citrusy, grapefruit flavour coming through from the citra so overall quite happy with how it came out! Not quite as red I was hoping for a "Red" IPA but what can you do!

Thanks for all your help, picture below looking a bit cloudy, happy to say after 2 days in the bottle its almost crystal clear

IMG_5797.jpg
 
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